[Dev Update] Exploits and Bans – 10 January 2008

This isn't going to happen.

Anet is under no obligation to give you anything back.

I am apparently one of the 117 found out today. I would like to clear a few things up that have been blatantly lied about.

Anet banned apparently ANYONE that had been there they even banned my nephew who went one time MONTHS ago. They banned those that did it enough to have an impact and those like myself that had no impact on the economy (had legitimate stacks of ecto in storage that had been there for years). I went not viewing it as an "exploit" which I will explain later. I went when bored and needed a break from my koabd grind .. friends were doing uw or doa so sometimes I was farming uw sometimes doa. LOL wasn't to make money .. already had plenty of it.

There was NEVER a hack and NOBODY EVER hacked the client. First time I was mapped there I logged onto another character to see what was up and to make sure I was not doing anything other than a ferry. My ele had already beaten all 4 areas and was sitting on the Mallyx quest for probably 6 months. I took her into Mallyx and mapped back to guild hall. She was then able to map right back to mallyx .. aka no different than ANY OTHER FERRY. She was not with ANYONE when this was done so OBVIOUSLY there was no hacking involved. No party leader that was an uber hacker was required to be able to ferry there. This was no different than a ferry to the deep or urgoz. Those screaming about economic gain .. sorry people farm EVERYTHING in this game so it wasn't any different than the ferry to Duncan. Matter of a fact it was the same thing when put in perspective. The Ferry had to have all 4 zones completed no more no less .. same as the Duncan Ferry. Sorry, no matter how much you try to act like this was different than Duncan .. it WASN'T. Only difference was Anet went ban happy this time.

As many have said open up the "glitch" again and follow the steps I listed .. you will see there was NEVER ANYONE that hacked the game client .. ANYONE could ferry there. Given the fact that Anet did NOT ban Duncan farmers why would ANY of the 117 think they would be banned for the same exact type of ferry to a main boss? We didn't.

Many of you judging were just as guilty of Duncan farming or getting a ferry to the deep or urgoz. This was no different no matter how much you try to act like it was. Same requirements to be able to ferry to the boss bypassing the other four areas for Duncan or Mallyx.

Will they unban us? I doubt it since they have either intentionally lied about it being a hack or were clueless as to it not being a hack. Would I like my account back? Sure 9000 hours logged almost finished with koabd. LOL. Only upside is I dont have to finish vanquishing

I ask the community to put the situation in perspective. There was no hacking involved so please consider the fact that it could have been you that was banned for doing something that has been done on every other boss in the game.

I agree with the ban. From the sound of it anet has gone threw it all to be fair but yet just in there decisions. You have to remember they have chat conversations on record of people probably admitting they know its wrong and planning on exploiting it to the max.

Just becuase mickey has killed mallyx 7 times does mean he didn't ferry 17 other times and was caught on chat records of how to do it and may be guilty by his own testimony being unaware he was being recorded. There is more to it than one might think.

ehh why don't they fix their exploits so this doesn't happen... so crap like this doesn't happen...honestly if they knew for 3 months they should have fixed it...

Good going to that, pissing off the core players off this game. When this game started it was full of bugs, tomes ranks you could get maxed in few hours, district trading making 1mil a minute, portal bugs, gold bugs, mony bugs, districts wich contained over 100bots each for more then half a year.

Now its finally straighten some things out you are banning ppl who found another bug? great going, those are the guys who made this game great.

Im not banned myself but this is not a proper behavior, personally i would sue you in court.

Also its greating a huge aggression amongst the online community, whom your blaiming for that?

You're still screwing with the .DAT file, eh?

Why should ANet break down and give back the 117 people who explictly used the exploit? It was a breach in the EULA and worthy of a perma-ban. If Anet unbanned these 117 players it's going to give other players the idea that they can use Exploits and hacks and get away with it if they QQ enough. Anet did the right thing and people who used the exploit explictly should stay banned.

http://guildwarsguru.com/forum/showp...&postcount=804

Cause no one cares.

IP bans are quite easy.... Spamming won't last too long under such enviroments.

There's no exploit involved in it.

There's a disparity in district economics, that's all. It simply involves changing your district, no messing with developer files or anything.

What's even the point of making our case here public, with the facts as we are aware of them. It seems to me that noone is even interested about what was actually going on here. Everyone has already deemed themselves judge, jury and executioner and tbh the more I read this thread the less bothered I am about losing my account. Do we really want to waste any more of our precious time on a game that is populated with people with nothing better to do than bask in the warmth of collective shadenfreuda? I only hope that one day the people who have been flaming here fall from their high marble pedastals on which they are perched and make a mistake.

If you could really get there without hacking, Leprekan, then i apolagize for all the yelling..

This deja-vu fix only proves bad version management by Anet. One of the patches in between those two reintroduced the bug. No lie involved.

How do you know that the DAT file was altered? Manipulating the data stream between Client and Server might be easier to gain certain advantages and still counts as client side hacking.

One of the major problems with this game is that they constantly change mechanics and only give partial explanations.

When you first enter the game you have almost no manual and are expected to learn as you go.

Meanwhile, things are constantly being changed.

Things change: For instance, when DoA was first introduced you could get an armbrace but could not exchange it for a weapon without doing some DoA quests. Now you can exchange an armbrace but not get it without doing the quests. You could not get into FoW or UW without favor then suddenly you can get in with scrolls. In a game where so many things change with no notice, how is anyone to know whether what they are doing is an exploit or a changed game dynamic? - and a lot of new players don't know to look at the update notices even when info is given.

Certain exploits are allowed. working your way through the three campaigns you would quickly learn that: a run to Droks for better armor is ok. A taxi to Urgoz or the Deep is ok. A Ferry to Consulate docks for armor is ok. A ferry to LA or KC without having done the required quests is ok.

Now you come across what seems to be a ferry to Mallyx - how in the heck are you supposed to know its not ok.

lol - I don't have a single character anywhere near DoA and I am glad because I probably would have fallen for this since there is no fricken way to tell what is allowed and not allowed

And even when they do bother to communicate with us we can't trust what they say anyway because they don't bother with little things like truth and accuracy.

So it doesn't really matter how I got into your house. Whether I used force to break your window, or you left the door unlocked. You're saying I can still be there because, well, your house is already there? Even though you and I both know that me, being in a place I'm not supposed to be in, is wrong?

Be sure to tell a judge, if your place is ever occupied by someone who shouldn't be there, that it's your fault your house exists, even though its only meant for you. Let me know what his,or her response is. Better yet, let me know if you actually try to tell the police and a judge that it's not the thieves fault, but the person who built the house for putting it there.

You people are so busy arguing over the "hows" when it doesn't really make any difference and this whole "Anet is lying" is smoke screen. You knew it was wrong, but the excuse seems to be "Well they put it there...".


I don't believe for an instant that this was some random "mistake". Everything about it screams something on the client side manipulation. Considering server side glitches that spread like wildfire such as the mapping glitch, and duping of items; If 6 months has gone by here with this and only 117 banned, out of the thousands that come in and out of DoA in a single day..... it's a clear sign Anet took a long time to investigate this in detail and those clearly responsible, and who took part in it multiple times, got the just punishment.

Set your plea to ANet leprekan.

The exploit DOESN'T involve screwing around with the .DAT file, and for these 117 players it was probably 1 person who had a totally random buffer overflow overwriting the zoneid of some town they decided to map to. And ArenaNet had more than enough time to fix it (over 3 months).

anyone need to know we didn't go straight to mallyx just a heads up we had to kill all the mobs and then kill him so an fyi if you didn't know

People were beating Mallyx using a hack/exploit every 10 minutes gaining immense amounts of cash.

Safe from the few that got banned by getting dragged in, what else is there to know?

??

Why should anet learn from their mistakes? It is YOU who should. There was an outpost they use for testing, and you found it, congrats. You got banned, and came to guru to QQ. Stop acting like anet are crying over this as badly are you are.

Please read my post again. NOBODY EVER TOUCHED ANY FILE. It was the SAME as ANY OTHER FERRY.

If you commit a crime, and aren't caught untill 6 months, or a year later you are still going to be tried and, if found guilty, sentenced. Breaching a Eula, like murder, has no statute of limitations. It does not matter when you transgressed, just that you did.

Anet, apparently, is not Jesus and does not forgive.

i agree with you, but then you have to understand things like this go on every day in gw and no one gets banned, but in the end it is thier game and thats all that matters.

That doesn't really matter, those mobs take around 30 minutes for a good team to take care. That is not the grueling part. The grueling part is having to go through the other areas to even get to the area where you fight the mobs then fight Mallyx. You skipped the longest part of DoA.


Yes I understand that, but if ANet were to ban players everytime they used an exploit there would be hardly any players left. I am sure every single person has used an exploit in the game at one point or another. The point is IF Anet were to revert the bans more and more people would use exploits and newer and more serious ones would be found. It would be a never ending circle.

The problem with you all trying to take your case public is that you are making an argument based on the fact that you abused an exploit and got caught.

Simple question that will tell you wether or not you were taking advantage of something that wasn't supposed to be there:

Where else in the game are you able to map to an outpost that will take you DIRECTLY (as in no quests, no fighting your way there, no downtime, no nothing just go and fight the end boss for your reward) to the final end area boss by pressing one button? When you can actually give an answer that isn't "None" the community might be more inclined to listen to you all.

lol - so they have no intention of fixing any exploit until it is used?

Let's lock the barn door after the horse is gone.

Ok, well, ya gotta do something weird to get there. Just like duping, they had to dc and shit.

Hack or exploit, I don't care. People who exploited the dopple bug were banned too, no hacks involved there. This is obviously a lot more serious as the economy is involved and players were acccessing an outpost that was never meant to be available through normal gameplay.

Lies or not, *shrug*. Maybe some hack to access it, maybe others didn't. End of the day it was an exploit no matter how you look at it.

Thats a good point to bring up. Ive said before, the extent of the punishment matters on HOW MANY PLAYERS DO IT, as well as the effects of the exploit.

However, Ferrying to Urgoz/Deep has always been part of the mechanic of owning a town. And once you get there you STILL have to beat the area to get the reward.

Consulate docks armor does nothing but give you max armor. You cannot SKIP anything, since the mission will not let you in.

The mallyx one lets you repeatedly beat mallyx without doing the prerequisite quests. This is a rather BIG difference with those other ferrying exploits.

useing the same bar every time does not make you a better player in fact in hinders you game play. as well as FFF all you do is 2 min runs the same way each time for however long you want to be on the only thing is you get to type but you are still doing the same thing day in and day out which does not make you a better player it makes you a bad one.

As for the community are you talking about the GW community or the Guilds and alliance communitys? and I agree that nothing is better then a common goal. but trying to put in FFF guilds as leaders of the GW world just because the own a town is a insult to all the guilds that help people be it PvE or PvP.

Frankly, if Pablo says it was not a hack and could happen by accident, that settles it for me. He has almost always been right about exploits in the past.

nope nothing strange, to obtain the town all you had to do was map to your guild hall after doimg mallys the first time. and once you hit G and leave guild hall you go to the town

Anet makes mistakes all the time. Fact is they will never admit being wrong, because that would call their credibility into question. However, its human nature to make mistakes. Someone who says "I never make a mistake" is not only lying to others, but sadly to themself. that kind of behavior still calls their credibility into question.

Several people have already described how the trick was done. The mechanics of the Mallyx trick is no different then ferrying someone from your guild hall to Urgoz. Whats the point of posting it another time, if people are not willing to read it the first time?

Yes I understand that, but if ANet were to ban players everytime they used an exploit there would be hardly any players left. I am sure every single person has used an exploit in the game at one point or another. The point is IF Anet were to revert the bans more and more people would use exploits and newer and more serious ones would be found. It would be a never ending circle.[/QUOTE]

yup the maj woulda been alot safer if this thing had gone public. but shiznit happens right? lol

Please click link and read my post .. hate when people are uninformed. Nothing had to be done to be able to ferry there. Just all four quests complete then map to gh after entering mallyx. AKA a standard FERRY used throughout the game.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...242767&page=43

Also i bet there are people who acidently found the town and never told a sole who are now banned. its a carpet FTL

yup the maj woulda been alot safer if this thing had gone public. but shiznit happens right? lol[/QUOTE] not everyone in game has used one they don't hear about them because people try not to let them leak out

^^ not none m8 - did you hear about the duncan glitch that literaly 10's of thousands of people were running in and out. Different story there wasn't it?

While the mechanical aspect of it is the same, the outpost is not. One is a legit outpost that every player can access. One is an outpost that was only ever ment for developer access. So these are equal again how???